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Dr. J.W. (Jaap) Kooijman

Faculty of Humanities
Departement Mediastudies
Photographer: Jelle Rietveld

Visiting address
  • Turfdraagsterpad 9
  • Room number: 2.12
Postal address
  • Postbus 94550
    1090 GN Amsterdam
  • Profiel

    Bio

     Jaap Kooijman (Amsterdam 1967 / PhD American Studies Amsterdam 1999)

    - Associate Professor Mediastudies and American Studies
    - author of Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture (revised and extended
      edition, AUP 2013)

  • English

    Bio

    Jaap Kooijman is associate professor in Media Studies and American Studies at the University of Amsterdam, vice-director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), and author of Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture (AUP, 2013), which has been published in open access. His articles on American popular culture have been published in journals such as The Velvet Light Trap, Postscript, GLQ, The Journal of American Culture, Celebrity Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Popular Music and Society, VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture, Cinema Journal, and Critical Studies in Television, as well as in edited collections such as Unpopular Culture (AUP, 2016), A Companion to Celebrity (Wiley, 2016), Revisiting Star Studies (Edinburgh UP, 2017), Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media (Bloomsbury, 2017), and Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online (Indiana UP, 2020). His audiovisual essays have been published in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, and 16:9. Together with Glyn Davis, Kooijman is editor of The Richard Dyer Reader, forthcoming with BFI in 2022.

    Fabricating the Absolute Fake

    The pageantry of Oprah Winfrey's daytime talk show, the Coca-Cola empire, Michael Jackson's turn from the King of Pop into an iconic global recluse: American pop culture - Hollywood cinema, television, pop music - dominates the rest of the world through its hegemonic presence. Does that make everyone a hybridized American, or do these elements find mediation within the other cultures that consume them?

    Fabricating the Absolute Fake applies concepts of postmodern theory - Baudrillard's hyperreality and Eco's "absolute fake," among others - to this globally mediated American pop culture in order to examine both the phenomenon itself and its appropriation in the Netherlands, as evidenced by such diverse cultural icons as the Elvis-inspired crooner Lee Towers, the Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, musical tributes to an assassinated politician, and the Dutch reality soap opera scene. A fascinating exploration of how global cultures struggle to create their own " America " within a post-9/11 media culture, Fabricating the Absolute Fake reflects on what it might mean to truly take part in American pop culture.

    A brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable work of cultural critique, Fabricating the Absolute Fake takes seemingly exhausted concepts like "Americanization" and turns them on their head. Refusing simple binaries between the fake and the authentic, or between cultural imperialism and native resistance, Kooijman demonstrates just how flexible the signifiers of Americanness can be when they circulate globally.
    Anna McCarthy, Cinema Studies, New York University

    Most daring and persuasive is Kooijman's ability to move between and connectthe most delicious pop and the most searing political events (9/11, the murder of Pim Fortuyn),never evading the seriousness of entertainment nor the spectacle of politics. A book that is a pleasure for what it conveys of its subject and for its intellectual rigor, managing to be at once subtle and straightforward, complex and lucid.
    Richard Dyer, Film Studies, King's College London

    This book will be an eye opener for its readers. Fabricating the Absolute Fake shows that pop culture is more than ephemeral entertainment. When looked at with Kooijman's cosmopolitan eye, pop culture can be seen as a continuing ritual in celebration of national identities, America 's identity for sure, but also, intriguingly, a Dutch or even European sense of self.
    Rob Kroes, American Studies, University of Amsterdam

  • Audiovisual essays
    In June 1982, film scholar Richard Dyer published a two-page essay on African-American star Diana Ross in the journal Marxism Today. Part of Dyer’s essay explicitly focuses on the American conception of success and specifically on how Ross is one of the few black artists who has been “allowed” to be such a success. The first half of this audiovisual essay applies Dyer’s text not to the “real” Diana Ross but to the fictional character she portrays in the star vehicle Mahogany (Berry Gordy, 1975), thereby showing how the onscreen performance and the off-screen persona are intertwined. The second half of the audiovisual essay aims to raise the question (rather than providing a definite answer) whether or not, three decades later, Dyer’s text could be applicable to African-American superstar Beyoncé Knowles. Published in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 2:4 2016: mediacommons.org/intransition/success
    Reguliersbreestraat (for Thomas Elsaesser)
  • Publications

    2023

    • Davis, G., & Kooijman, J. (2023). The Richard Dyer Reader: edited. British Film Institute. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781839023200 [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2023). Coming to Terms and Other Essays on Bodies and Affect. In G. Davis, & J. Kooijman (Eds.), The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 297-303). Bloomsbury.
    • Kooijman, J. (2023). Dancing at the Empty Discotheque: Two retro disco music videos shot during COVID-19. Collateral , (36), Article c. https://www.collateral-journal.com/index.php?cluster=36 [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2023). Donna Summer and the White European Male Gaze. Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, 2023(2 (29)). https://zfmedienwissenschaft.de/online/videography-blog/donna-summer-and-white-european-male-gaze [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2023). The Streisand Effect: Screen Stars Dictionary. Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays. https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/screen-stars-dictionary/?lang=en
    • Kooijman, J., & Davis, G. (2023). A Star Is Born and Other Essays on Stardom and Image. In J. Kooijman, & G. Davis (Eds.), The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 18-24). BFI.
    • Kooijman, J., & Davis, G. (2023). Getting over the Rainbow and Other Essays on Gay Liberation. In J. Kooijman, & G. Davis (Eds.), The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 134-140). BFI.
    • Kooijman, J., & Davis, G. (2023). In Defence of Disco and Other Essays on Entertainment and Ideology. In The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 80-86). BFI.
    • Kooijman, J., & Davis, G. (2023). Masculinity is So Boring and Other Conversations with Richard Dyer. In J. Kooijman, & G. Davis (Eds.), The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 484-489). BFI.
    • Kooijman, J., & Davis, G. (2023). The Persistence of Textual Analysis and Other Essays on Form and Meaning. In J. Kooijman, & G. Davis (Eds.), The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 394-399). BFI.
    • Kooijman, J., & Davis, G. (2023). White and Other Essays on Representation and Visibility. In J. Kooijman, & G. Davis (Eds.), The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 210-215). BFI.
    • Kooijman, J., & Davis, G. (2023). Writing Out of Love or Politics. In J. Kooijman, & G. Davis (Eds.), The Richard Dyer Reader (pp. 527-539). BFI.

    2021

    2020

    • Kooijman, J. (2020). "At Last a Dream That I Can Call My Own": Beyoncé and the Performance of Stardom in Dreamgirls and Cadillac Records. In M. Iddon, & M. L. Marshall (Eds.), Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online (pp. 114-135). Indiana University Press. [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2020). Talking [Heads] About Whitney. NECSUS, 9(2), 445-448. https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/15339 [details]

    2019

    2017

    • Hermes, J., Kooijman, J., Littler, J., & Wood, H. (2017). On the move: Twentieth anniversary editorial of the European Journal of Cultural Studies. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), 595-605. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549417733006 [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2017). I Want My MTV, We Want Our TMF: The Music Factory, MTV Europe, and Music Television in the Netherlands, 1995-2011. VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture, 6(11), 93-101. https://doi.org/10.18146/2213-0969.2017.JETHC126 [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2017). The Boxed Aesthetic and Metanarratives of Stardom: Analyzing Music Videos on DVD Compilations. In G. Arnold, D. Cookney, K. Fairclough, & M. Goddard (Eds.), Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media (pp. 231-244). Bloomsbury Academic. [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2017). To Critique Affect by Means of Affect. Cinema Journal, 56(4), 146-148. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2017.0048 [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2017). Whitewashing the Dreamgirls: Beyoncé, Diana Ross, and the Commodification of Blackness. In S. Q. Yu, & G. Austin (Eds.), Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods (pp. 105-124). Edinburgh University Press. [details]

    2016

    2015

    2014

    • Kooijman, J. (2014). Globalisation and television formats [Review of: T. Oren, S. Shahaf (2012) Global television formats: understanding television across borders; K. Meizel (2011) Idolized: music, media, and identity in American Idol]. NECSUS, 3(1), 319-325. https://doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2014.1.KOOI [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2014). The True Voice of Whitney Houston: Commodification, Authenticity, and African American Superstardom. Celebrity Studies, 5(3), 305-320. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2014.911110 [details]

    2013

    • Kooijman, J. (2013). Fabricating the absolute fake: America in contemporary pop culture. - Revised and extended edition. Amsterdam University Press. [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2013). The King of Pop and the President of Cool: Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, and Celebrity Culture. In A. M. Fellner, S. Hamscha, K. Heissenberger, & J. J. Moos (Eds.), Is It 'Cause It's Cool?: Affective Encounters with American Culture (pp. 141-160). (American Studies in Austria; No. 13). LIT Verlag. [details]

    2012

    • Kooijman, J. (2012). Dreaming the American Nightmare: The Cultural Life of 9/11. In C. Meiner, & K. Veel (Eds.), The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises (pp. 177-190). (Concepts for the study of culture; No. 3). De Gruyter. [details]

    2011

    2010

    • Copier, L., Kooijman, J., & Vander Stichele, C. (2010). Close encounters: the Bible as pre-text in popular culture. In P. Culbertson, & E. M. Wainwright (Eds.), The Bible in/and popular culture: a creative encounter (pp. 189-195). (Semeia studies; No. 65). Society of Biblical Literature. [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2010). The Oprahfication of 9/11: September 11, the war in Iraq, and The Oprah Winfrey show. In T. T. Cotten, & K. Springer (Eds.), Stories of Oprah: the Oprahfication of American culture (pp. 131-144). University Press of Mississippi. https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781604734072.003.0010 [details]

    2009

    • Kooijman, J. (2009). Are we all Americans? 9/11 and discourses of multiculturalism in the Netherlands. In D. Rubin, & J. Verheul (Eds.), American multiculturalism after 9/11: transatlantic perspectives (pp. 181-190). (New debates in American studies). Amsterdam University Press. [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2009). Contemporary Dutch cinema and Hollywood. In H. Krabbendam, C. A. van Minnen, & G. Scott-Smith (Eds.), Four centuries of Dutch-American relations 1609-2009 (pp. 1060-1070). Boom. [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2009). Cruising the channels: the queerness of zapping. In G. Davis, & G. Needham (Eds.), Queer TV: theories, histories, politics (pp. 159-171). Routledge. [details]

    2008

    2016

    2010

    2008

    • Kooijman, J. (2008). Fabricating the absolute fake: America in contemporary pop culture. Amsterdam University Press. http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789053564929 [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2008). Amsterdamned global village: a cinematic site of karaoke Americanism. In J. Kooijman, P. Pisters, & W. Strauven (Eds.), Mind the screen: media concepts according to Thomas Elsaesser (pp. 188-197). Amsterdam University Press. [details]
    • Kooijman, J. (2008). Fok de macht: Nederlandse popcultuur als karaoke-amerikanisme. Sociologie, 4(2-3), 195-207. http://www.atypon-link.com/UBO/doi/abs/10.1347/sogi.4.2-3.195 [details]
    • Kooijman, J., Pisters, P., & Strauven, W. (2008). Mind the screen: media concepts according to Thomas Elsaesser. Amsterdam University Press. [details]
    • Kooijman, J., Pisters, P., & Strauven, W. (2008). A looking glass for old and new screens. In J. Kooijman, P. Pisters, & W. Strauven (Eds.), Mind the screen: media concepts according to Thomas Elsaesser (pp. 9-15). Amsterdam University Press. [details]

    2014

    • Kooijman, J. (2014). De politiek van de zichtbaarheid. In A. van Dam (Ed.), Roze in beeld (pp. 18-23). Xanten. [details]

    Journal editor

    • Kuipers, G. M. M. (editor) & Kooijman, J. W. (editor) (2008). Sociologie (Journal).
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    • Prins Bernhard Cultuurdfonds
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